Body, Mind, and Spirit
by Aurora Firestorm
Summary: Stolen from a German research camp, The Sorrow enters the Cobra Unit, a force meant to save the world -- but an eerie German trump card stands in the way. They say that oftentimes your worst enemy is yourself... M for graphic violence and/or sex.
1. Everything Ends

(Author's Note: I am aware that my story's format and subject is quite similar to the already present story "Love's Sorrow." However, given that I wrote over 40 pages of my own story before seeing said published one, I'd like readers to know that it was not indeed patterned off of, copied from, or otherwise ripped off the already published story, nor was it written with competitive motivations.)

* * *

The rain splashed against her face so hard that not even her shielding hand helped. The Patriot's barrel smoked against the cold water, the hiss of hot metal drowned out in the downpour. No wind, just rain, straight down onto her soaking hair, her heavy pack, her weary shoulders.

She shifted beneath the canvas straps. Even her light jungle fatigues weighed down on her now.

The heaviest weight was that in her chest.

"...Zorin."

His face had changed so much, yet not at all. It still had the shapely jaw, strong nose, pale eyes set deep into a light face. His cheeks, though, had sunken in since she last met him, his brow growing sharper as age took its toll. How old was he now...fifty-five? Sixty?

"I don't remember that name." His voice was warm, even in the freezing February rain.

She pressed her lips together and started to tell him that it was over, that the Cobra Unit had been gone for decades, but the words fell flat on her tongue and drained away.

"Sorrow." She sank back on her heels.

He smiled faintly, the same knowing, sad smile she remembered. He stepped forward and laid a gloved hand on her shoulder, pulled her close, too close for her to resist, and she had thrown her arms around him before she could say another word.

His chin rested on her shoulder, warm breath in her ear. "I know why you're here."

_No. No, you don't. If you did, you wouldn't be standing here now._ She let her eyes close and tried to pull away, but he pressed her against his chest until she bowed her head and agreed to stay.

-

_"Remember, this is just like a snatch mission. Don't disturb anyone else. Get in, take the information, do what must be done, and get out."_

_"You never told me 'what must be done.'"_

_"...No. And that is the second half of your mission."_

_"Major, you're dancing around the topic. Tell me what it is. I can see in your face that you're dodging it, if not in your words._

-

"You're here to kill me."

She raised her eyes to meet his -- they were wet and red at the edges, but if that was from tears or from the rain, she couldn't tell. Then again...it always seemed to rain, when he was sad.

With gentle fingers, she took one of his hands away from her shoulders, then another, and this time he didn't stop her from stepping back.

A rumble of thunder echoed overhead. "I am one of the Soviet Union's most useful men in any of their intelligence divisions." Zorin -- The Sorrow -- raised a hand to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. A familiar motion. To this day, why hadn't he ever gotten contact lenses?

"You are." She kept her voice flat, stiff. Doing her job. Nothing more.

-

_  
"We'll name him after your grandfather, Adamska." She smiled and placed a hand where the baby rested. "You did say he always wanted one alive in the family at all times."_

_Smiling back at her, he placed an arm around her shoulders. "It isn't necessary, but--"_

_"I like it." Sinking into his soft sweater, she let herself close her eyes in a moment of calm. "Adamska William."_

-

"And you were sent here to eliminate me before returning." He motioned to his chest, and then she realized -- he wasn't carrying a sidearm. Where his holster was, there was a less ragged patch of sweater, and the belts had left darker traces across the fabric.

She lowered her brows and slowly moved her gaze down to the forest floor. His boots were mostly clean; he had to have come here just for this reason. How did he know? Had his spirits told him? That also meant--

"Boss."

-  
_  
"This is an assassination mission."_

-

"You have to shoot me."

Her head rose; she clenched her hands around the Patriot's handle. For a moment, she managed to raise its muzzle, but then it fell back against her hip.

_-_

_"We're disbanding the unit. All of us have to go back to our respective countries. It's likely none of you will see me again."_

_-  
_

"I can't." The words tore from her lips and took her heart with it. Her one, her only weakness, and one she never expected. The man she loved, she could never stop loving. Not even to defend her country...

"Shoot me!" He grabbed her arm, forced her to remember that she still held the Patriot in that hand. "You want to finish your mission, don't you?"

Finish the mission. Yes. She had come all this way to finish the mission. To stop the Russians from winning the Cold War and threatening America and the world. To make sure their intelligence was cut off.

She looked up at him.

"Then...you have to shoot me."

There was no way around it.

She tried to say something, anything, even _I love you_, but it came out a mangled, anguished sound as she hefted the Patriot up to the level of his head.

"The spirit of the warrior...will always be with you."

_-  
"We trust that you can do this. I know he was one of your old unit...but those days are over. Now, he is your enemy."_

_-  
_

She narrowed her eyes to slits, and his face blurred into a pale mess behind her tears. As she blinked, a smile traced its way across his thin lips.

"Don't be sad." As she tightened her grip, she heard the pain in his voice. The fear. Even though he had looked others' deaths in the eye so many times, he was still afraid. "We'll meet...again someday."

Her finger tensed. The Patriot recoiled back against her palm, through her arm, into her shoulder. Its grooved muzzle spat a single flash.

The Sorrow collapsed onto the river stones, a red stain welling up in his left eye. She threw aside the Patriot and caught him under the arms as he raised himself, blood dripping from the burst eye, glasses shot away and shattered on the ground. His chest heaved as he tried to move his arms, but she held him steady and pressed his head to her shoulder, holding him close as she counted his breaths.

One.

Two.

None.

He relaxed in her arms, falling against her, the pulsing from his eye reduced to a thin stream. Laying him on the riverbank, she brushed his bloody hair out of his face.

"Sorrow." She leaned over him and kissed him softly on the lips, then sat and bowed her head onto his chest. "There was no time, between then and now, that I ever stopped loving you."

She stayed there for what seemed like hours as the sky tore apart and poured rivers onto them both, washing away his blood and leaving only the stains in his hair and the dark spot on her jacket. It dribbled from her breast to her pants, as if she had been shot through the heart.

It took all the will she had left to stand and pick up the Patriot and its empty shell casing from the mud. With the dull ache still in her chest, she looked back at the body on the stones. It didn't seem...right, somehow, to leave him there. He had guided so many others to inner peace after death; it wasn't fitting that he should be cast aside in some forsaken forest to rot.

But she couldn't do anything about that. Either Soviet troops would find him and give his body the proper treatment for one of their fallen, or he would stay here, unknown, a disappearance. A smear in the military records, where his name was wiped away without reason.

As she turned to move past him and head for the retrieval point, her foot crunched on an odd shape. She crouched and picked up the object.

His glasses. She wiped them on her pants and then pushed them into the pocket that held the bullet's jacket. Thunder rumbled; she ducked her head and charged into the forest, realizing how little time she had left to reach the cliff where an American retrieval balloon package would parachute down for her.

"For a while, we lost contact with you." Major Evan Dale paced back and forth in the plane, his hands clenched tightly behind his back. He always did that, the nervous finger-lacing that he hid as a confident stance. He wasn't fooling anyone. "We thought you might have run into some trouble."

"No." She looked him in the eye and reached into her pocket. One of his thin brows rose, and from the pocket she pulled The Sorrow's glasses and laid them on the shelf beside Dale. In the crook of her finger was the metal jacket; she tightened her hand around it for a moment, then let that drop beside them with a soft _clink._

Dale's other brow rose to match the first. His fingers knotted tighter, and he gave a curt nod. Even the propellors' growl faded away into cold silence.

Her gaze trailed off into the distance, the Major forgotten as she tensed her right hand, clenched, released. The recoil from the single shot was still there, rattling the bones, amplified as she rolled the scene over and over in her mind like a movie reel with no end.

"You're the strongest woman alive."

She glanced up at him, his face still blurry in her distracted view.

"But what had to be done, had to be done. He--"

"I don't need an excuse, Major." She turned to face him, bringing him into focus. "I don't need an explanation."

Dale jerked back, his fingers prying free of each other. "No. I suppose you don't." He held his breath for a moment, his chest freezing, his mouth open, before he managed to speak again. "You loved him. You had to."

"I did." She stood now, her face expressionless save for the constant, intent stare. "And I still do. His death changes nothing."

Far in the back of her mind, she cursed the Philosophers. They birthed her for their own devices, then cast her aside. Sent her to meet her new family, then tore them away. Given her a chance to love, then forced her to kill that love. Let her bear a son...then taken him, too.

Nothing belonged to her except the mission. That, and that alone, was hers.

No enemies. No friends. No loves or hates.

Not anymore.

"We'll be needing you again soon, but until then, you have leave."

She snapped back to his words. He was _pitying_ her. The same men who had sent her to tear her heart out were trying to look sorry.

"Major Dale," she stood at attention and stared into his confused eyes, "I know that I'm a tool of the Philosophers."

"You're--" He cut himself off and sighed, motioning for her to continue.

"I understand that. And I understand that I must do anything necessary to preserve this world from global war, to keep the nations in harmony. If one, ten, a thousand men have to die by my hand, I will finish the mission."

"You're _human_. You're allowed to act like one."

"If being human means sacrificing the world for my own whims, then no, I'm not."

He sighed, stepping forward to clap a hand on her shoulder. "Take the leave. Get out of the base. Take some time to think, for once." He reached for the glasses and pulled as if to take them, but his hand stopped just as it reached the edge of the shelf. After a moment's pause, he pushed them toward her.

She glanced down at them, reached up, and lifted them into her hand. Rainwater still dripped from the lenses. Holding them carefully, she sat at the far end of the hangar and stared through the hatch door.

Hot tears welled in her eyes and rolled onto her cheeks.

_Don't be sad._

The sense of eyes on her back forced her to turn.

Dale had already left the hangar.

_We'll meet again someday._


	2. Everything Begins

(Author's Note: Credit for The Sorrow's first name -- Zorin -- goes to Inonibird and her Cobra Days comic. I liked her pick for the names, so I'll likely be using them in this story. As for the occasional use of Russian, just work with me here. I don't speak Russian, so I'm not sure if the words are exactly right.)

* * *

_Twenty-four years ago_

The rain came down in torrents, drowning out all but the howling siren. _My God. They've already been alerted._

Fury swore under his breath and yanked his mask down over his face. "Someone's gonna burn. How in hell did they know we were coming?"

"Joy, orders?" The Pain pulled a pheromone vial from his pocket, clenching it in one huge fist and peering over the rock from the slit in his hood.

Climbing up onto the rubble, she lay on her stomach and raised her binoculars. In a quick swipe, she scanned the base. Dogs at the entrance, scrabbling on their chains. Armed troops all over the perimeter. Jury-rigged turrets on several roofs nearest the wall. Electric fences sparking in the rain. Antipersonnel mines scattered in the brush.

The Philosophers were brilliant men, with the largest spy network the world had ever known, but when their intel failed, it failed _hard._

"Lab, my ass. This isn't a lab. This is a _fortress._" Fury shouldered his flamethrower.

"Pain, back to your question." Joy slid down from the rocks and ducked against them. "There is still a weak point on their western edge. They're expecting us to come from the front -- where we could get in under the gate -- or anywhere they have a maintenance or cargo door. Take the easy way in."

Her lips curled back in a grin, and Fury stopped his protest. He ducked his head, his eyes narrowing in glee behind his mask.

"So we'll give them exactly what they're looking for." She motioned in the air as she spoke, pointing at respective people. "Pain, Fury, you two are going to fake a charge at the doors on the eastern side. Throw the worst grenades you have, burn some fuel, draw their fire. If you commit, they'll commit. Pain, they shouldn't even be able to _see_ through your hornets. In fact, they shouldn't see either of you in general."

His eyes crinkled in a smile.

"Good. Fury?"

"Let's burn."

She turned to The Fear. "The End is already in position. While Fury and Pain draw them over, we'll be coming in from the west. There's no door, but there _is_ an overhang. It doesn't reach the wall, but it's well within your jump range. Engage your stealth camo, jump for the barb wire, don't shred your hands. Cut it through to clear the way for me."

As Fury stood, an oil-slick shadow in his fireproof suit, Joy took him by the shoulder. "You and The Pain will retreat back around the base and come in the same way we do. You saw the overhang coming in -- go far back into the woods, climb up on that, and fire out some grappling hooks into Fear's gap in the wall wire. Once you're in, stay low. Pain, try to keep them distracted, but Fury, you've got to sit on your hands until we figure out what the inside looks like."

"Yeah, I know." He raised his flamer's nozzle, the pilot light glowing eerie blue behind its rain shield. The snarling-dog etch on the side of the shield roared to life as he gave the flamer a test puff. _Cry Havoc_, read the gleaming letters under the etch.

"The Fear and I are taking off now. Give us five minutes, then open fire." She set off at a fast trot around the perimeter of the base, keeping her flashlight low in the darkness. Rain at night was the worst weather possible for this -- hadn't the weathermen said it would be clear with a full moon? Everything about this mission was going wrong already.

"The End, deal with the western guards." She held her flopping radio still against her shoulder. "That rock cliff near the wall -- I want no men anywhere near it. But don't get their attention."

The Fear was far ahead of her, sprinting like a monkey through the lower canopy, rushing up the side of the rock. Perching on its tip, he waited until she came into view and motioned for him to go.

He flickered to an outline that sprang off the end of the crag, then disappeared into the night.

She hoisted herself up into one of the trees, then grabbed the vines covering the plateau, hauling herself onto the edge. Crouching there, she stripped off her outer camouflage suit as she peered down at the guards.

Fast asleep.

A grenade blast shook the earth, and a sound like a giant beehive swelled in the east.

Dogs barked, guards shouted, and the guns on the roof blazed toward the turmoil.

"Good." The barb wire parted, and she pulled out her grappling hook. _Good luck, Fury and Pain. Don't you two get shot._ She fired.

The hook sailed out and caught the side of the wall. _Onward and upward._ She swung down, planted her feet on the wall, and scrambled up the rope.

The fortress lay in blood-slicked chaos at her feet.

"My God_._" _Again._ She hunkered down on the wall, her white sneaking suit blending in. "The End, did you know about this?"

"About what? I don't like the sound of that..."

"The compound is in shambles."

"I can't see the ground, Joy. I can only catch the roofs and some of the windows..." He groaned, more static merging with the sound of the storm. Thunder boomed overhead, complementing Fury's grenades. "I'm exhausted in the night, and the rain, but I'll be all right."

_I told you that you were too dependent on your photosynthesis._ She sighed and surveyed the ground. Guards everywhere, hair-triggered and paranoid, glancing over each other's shoulders. Every so often, one of them fired a shot into the rainy dark, or a grenade went off behind some buildings, or a shadow moved and jerked them all to nervous attention. Once or twice, she thought she heard shouting from some of the buildings.

Then, it hit her, something her subconscious had been trying to tell her since minute one -- _they_ weren't the enemy the guards were looking for. Someone else had gotten here before them.

Well...that made the situation worse than ever_._ "Fear. Status." She threw her hook rope over the wall and slid down into the complex.

"I removed the turrets for you."

"Great." She ducked into a niche. Everything was so sterile-white here...well, all the better for her and her suit. "We need a way into the labs. You're invisible -- you're not in danger. Wait where we dropped down, for Fury and Pain, and then work on finding the Enigma coderoom. I trust you. Stay out of trouble."

"Yes ma'am."

"One more thing." She ducked back when a dog barked around the side of the building. "There's something wrong here. I think you can tell that. Look out for the guys that got here before us. Don't shoot first."

Getting a uniform wasn't too difficult. The guards traveled in pairs, but her judo training was well suited to multiple attackers, and the targets were both down before they could alert the others. She stashed both the bodies in a shed near the wall, taking the thinner man's uniform and tucking the pants legs into her boots and shoving her hair into her hat. A little big, but if she wrapped the jacket tight under the belt, it would be passable. Enough to get in the compound. Surely the scientists wouldn't question her.

Stolen rifle in hand, she marched into the compound proper, making sure not to let the other guards get a good look at her face. They didn't question her when she passed by, though one of the dogs growled, and she made a quick exit into the labs.

Their inside made their outside look dirty and black. The floors were tiled white, the walls painted white, the ceilings seamless...white. She felt obvious even in disguise, what with her uniform being green. The only motion was the rolling of water across the floor and into drains at the edges of the hall. Spatters of blood flecked the walls in patches, breaking up their brilliance, and her senses went into full alert.

_Whoever was out there, was also in here. _Apparently the Cobras had just missed the slaughterhouse scene that had rushed through the compound, including the labs. Possibly starting in the labs.

_Where would I find a POW in here?_ Nothing looked like a prison at first glance, but then again, no one said they had to be in prison per , asking was the best solution...so she would find a scientist and ask.

Except there were no scientists. As she paced the halls, holding her rifle stiffly over one shoulder, she saw nothing but still, stark white and red. No one. Not even a blur behind the plate glass windows.

A headache pulsed behind her skull. Pressing a hand to her face, she paused for a moment to inspect the pain. Not too bad...it was sudden, but not sharp. She ignored it and continued her search.

A set of stairs led up, so she followed them, hoping for better luck on a higher floor. Lightning flashed through one of the rare outer-wall windows; she paused, noticing an outline.

A lab-coated man leaned against the wall, a tuft of hair in his hands, his eyes glazed and staring down through the floor. A trickle of blood stood out against the white, rolling its way down the side of his head.

The Nazis probably treated these men like garbage, if this was any sign. She switched to German, approximating the accent as best she could. "Hey, you!"

He looked up, his face blank, gaze weary and unfocused. "Yes, sir, ma'am...oh." Numbly, he held out the wad of hair.

She swung down her rifle but didn't point it at him. "What's going on here?" He didn't even wince as she barked into his face. "What happened to you?"

A weak smile crooked his lips. "Ask them."

"Ask who?" She jabbed the rifle at him. _Hope I don't scare him too much. Then again, he looks nothing even close to scared. Catatonic is a better word._

"Do you hear it?"

"Do I hear what?" Was she getting sick? Her head throbbed now, as if her sinuses were under pressure. "Be clear."

"One touch, and I heard them _all_..."

This was getting stranger by the minute, and strange was _not_ what she was looking for right now.

"Pull yourself together!" She prodded him with the barrel now, making sure to keep the safety on, but he didn't even flinch. "I'm looking for the Soviet prisoner. Where are you keeping him?"

"...Which one?" The scientist leaned back, teasing his bloody hair between his hands.

"He's very pale." That's all the appearance information they had. Male and albino, normal size.

"The ghost man."

_What?_ "Where is he?"

"Block C, this floor." He made a lazy weaving motion with his hands, and Joy mapped that against her view of the compound from above. Her head hurt _so much_ now -- was this place using some kind of gas? "He's in the back, in the shielded cells. Don't let him touch you..."

"I'll be careful." She passed by the man, who turned back to staring out at the storm and pulling at his hair. With a flick of her hand, she jabbed him with an anesthetic dart from her pocket.

He collapsed in a heap. That would have to do -- at least he wouldn't be able to recount her presence. He pretty much blended in anyway, and it was the best she could do. At a brisk walk, she set out for Block C,following his vague motions.

* * *

The door to Block C was labeled, locked, and covered in chrome. As she set to work picking it, she glanced down and noticed a different color standing out against the white.

Pinkish-tan. The color of warm brains.

As the pins slid into place, she opened the door to see a man and his gun fall out into the hallway. A single hole pierced the back of his head, blood dripping from his mouth. Suicide, and a recent one. She held her rifle at ready.

_Things man was not meant to know._ That had been Major Dale's words. _The Nazis are working with things man was not meant to know. They're looking for anything, anyone to fuel the quest for the ubermensch. They've rounded up anyone with a remote claim to psychic, telekinetic, or otherwise paranormal phenomena. These are all shams, of course..._

Well, he could tell her headache _of course._ That, and the scientist out there tearing his hair out to the tune of a numbing shock. Even if these prisoners weren't actually psychic or whatever they were supposed to be, they were putting up a serious fight, and they were affecting even the environment here.

The walls and floor were chromed too, just like the door, and she winced at how reflective everything was. It amplified the light and cast it in her face from so many angles in so many patterns, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment to block it all out. Only one area had no shine, and that was where a huge mass had been cut free from the wall at its weakly bolted edges.

The end of the hall. Another shiny door, another lock. She picked through it in a few minutes.

As the door swung open, she saw a shadow sitting against the back wall of the cell, the remains of a light bulb lying out of its reach. She left the door open -- who would come? That one scientist? -- for enough light to see her target.

A thin man in monochrome camouflage sat bound to the wall. Had she not seen his chest moving, she would have thought him dead; his head hung forward in his chains, eyes closed, face wan, sunken, and expressionless. A thick white beard shrouded his jaw.

"_Zdrastvuitye_. Hello." She knelt before him.

His eyes flicked open, silver in the dim light, the only speck of real life she had seen so far. Albino indeed, just the blue-eyed variety. As he took in her face, his curious stare crawling from her eyes to her chin and back, he leaned his head to the side.

"You are not German."

Good, he spoke reasonable English. Her Russian was lacking, sadly, but she had been told he would understand enough to get out. "No, I'm not."

"You come to find me?" His tone was soft and deep, mellow in all the carnage and chaos. Maybe he hadn't seen or heard any of it. The walls loomed heavy and thick, lending the chrome hall an eerie silence.

"I'm sent from the Allies to get you out." With a nod, she inspected his shackles. He was chained at his wrists, ankles, and neck, with enough freedom to manipulate his own clothing and reach a chamber pot in the corner; other than what he wore, he had no clothing, no visible supplies, nothing. No bed or blanket. No food or water.

"They treat you terribly." His wrist bones protruded, his spider-hands strung tight with tendons that stood out under his skin. She pressed her hand against his neck; warm, but not overheating, and his pulse was slow and steady. "When did they last feed you?"

"Three weeks." The floor rattled, shaking the chains, and Joy paused to discern its source. Nothing close or locatable.

"You're the first sane person I've seen here." Picking at the manacles, she worked on his neck band first. His skin was red and raw around it, but at least they hadn't put it so tight he had trouble breathing. "What should I call you? Name, rank?"

"...You would say, lieutenant? Yes. My name is Zorin Petrovich Korolev." He bowed his head as the steel band fell away. "Say my name. I am not lieutenant to you."

"All right, Mr.--"

"Zorin. You saved me. I show you respect, not -- is it, _vice versa_?"

"Zorin." She glanced up at the chrome hall -- the door at the end was still shut, the body at the end cooling against it. "What happened here?"

His eyes darkened, his mouth pulling back into a sad line. "The men here...they are dying. Some are dead. They are tired, tired men, bitter, pained. They want killing the guards."

The second band fell to the ground. "Who did it? Did someone else get here before me?"

Zorin shook his head. "The men here have great power. The Nazis making them to change their power to what they want."

"Did they do that to you?" She slid the lockpick into the third band, on his opposite wrist. He turned over his free hand, inspecting the chafed skin.

"No." His white brows knotted up as he turned away from her. The floor gave another rattle; voices below shouted. "I am good. They want me. But I will not help them. They give me food less, so that I listen, but I will not help them."

"Good." She checked the door again -- still, no one. Continued lockpicking. Tried to work out what Zorin was getting at. _My head. If it hurts any more, I'm not sure I'll be able to keep this up. Ugh. Feels like someone's hammering the back of my skull. When did the guys on the first floor come back? There was no one here last I looked._

"Who killed that man there?" She jiggled the lockpick. Rusty manacles.

"The Nazis wanted for me to help them. To teach the others how to be like me. There was a psychic man...they trained him for so long looking in me and seeing my mind." He pulled the shackle away when Joy unlocked it, fingering the red marks there. "I know not if he can or cannot see things like me. He is gone now."

"Dead?"

"He leaves. He killed the guard here. He is not himself anymore." Zorin peered up at Joy, fear in his weary silver eyes.

"All right." Another shackle off. One to go. "After this, we've got to break you out of--"

A loud _crash_ too close for comfort.

"Of the compound. _Damnit._" Pressing a hand to her forehead, she slumped back against the wall beside him. _What now, what now, what now?_

"You have pain in your head? I do also. It is the mind power here."

"Mind power?" She narrowed her eyes and leaned her head to peer down the hall. A shadow blocked the glow from beneath the door.

"Many psychic men." His eyes flashed to the side of the cell, staring at some point on the wall, tracking carefully as if analyzing the dust there. "The Nazis, their shining walls do nothing. And --" Zorin stood, tried to move, and fell when his leg reached the end of the chain. "They come here now -- go!"

"No, no, we're getting you out of here, damnit, if you die now the Nazis get intel and we don't, and then we're screwed." She pulled out a pair of barb wire cutters, gnawed through the chain link closest to the shackle, and dragged Zorin to his feet.

"Look at me." She held up two fingers in a V and pointed them at her eyes. "_Don't stop moving._ Not unless I do."

"I follow you. Yes."

"And _keep quiet._ I don't know who's out here, but don't draw attention. Here." She yanked out her pistol and thrust it into Zorin's hands. "Use it if you have to."

He fumbled the weapon, staring at it in surprise, but halfway through his nod she yanked him out into the chrome hall.

Voices shouted from beyond the corridor's end; an alarm shrieked to life through the chaos. The sound of clanging doors rattled the floor.

"Stop." Zorin clapped a hand on her shoulder halfway down the hall, holding her back. She whirled, opened her mouth to speak, then paused to focus on his face. His eyes were widening, the pupils dilating, glazing for a moment, staring past her, his lips moving in silence.

_What...are you doing?_ All her knowledge screamed for her to go, but a scrap of instinct said to stay.

Just a scrap. But that scrap had saved her more than once. "Zorin. Talk to me."

"Three men are still inside. The Nazis chasing them here now."

The alarm howled in her ears as the clanging and thumping drew closer. The mob below had moved to the upper floor.

She jabbed him with the butt of the rifle, drawing his attention again, and moved forward.

"Wait." He rushed to the door. "Come." Pushing ahead of her, he bolted into the hall, stumbling on atrophied legs.

_What are you doing?_ She ran after him, charging into the lab proper and pausing to point her rifle down the hall behind her.

An ashen hand trailed around a distant corner, lying limp on the floor in a wine red slick. _They're here. He knew...how?_ "Run!"

He pushed himself to a sprint, stumbled, kept moving. Where they were going, she wasn't sure, but there had to be another staircase somewhere here. Distant gunfire echoed down the halls.

Around a corner, they ran straight into a barricade. Someone, whether guard or prisoner, had wedged a huge steel panel across the hall and sealed it to the wall with gobs of epoxy. _Question is, which side are we on?_ Joy ducked and peeked alongside the wall, catching a needle's-eye view of the other side.

One dead body, uniformed. The prisoners must have broken out earlier, slaughtered the scientists, and then set up a few deterrents.

"Where is everyone now, Zorin?" She fingered the panel's beat-up edges. They were twisted as if someone had used huge cutters to saw them apart from their original source. "How did they get these supplies?"

He was unnervingly prompt with his answer. "A man here escaped and killed the Nazis near him. He leads them now, and they hide in the buildings here and try to escape." Sinking to his knees, he paused to catch his breath and then lay on his chest. He slithered through a gap under the panel, and Joy followed suit.

"So he broke them all out." She stood and shouldered her rifle as the sound of footsteps clattered down the hall. "We're going to have to do the same thing." _They're coming from multiple angles._

"Give me orders." He stood at attention, much the same as her own unit, his sunken eyes sharp and alert.

"Stay behind me."

"Please." He stepped to block her path.

_Why is he so insistent?_ She glared into his gaze, forcing him to take a step back. "You want a mission, Lieutenant? Is that it?" _I can't believe I'm doing this._ But that slice of intuition said something wasn't right about him, that he knew far more than he should and could do more as well...

"Yes."

Her splitting headache peeked through the conversation; she forced herself not to think about it as she set off at a trot. "Joy."

"Yes, Joy."

She ducked into another empty corridor as they passed it and took a few precious seconds to gather her thoughts.

"All right. We can't go back the way I came. They're already here. So we're heading to the roof." She narrowed her eyes; his mouth was moving again, whispering words she couldn't hear to something she couldn't see.

He jerked to attention. "Yes. The roof."

"Wait." She pinned him with the butt of the rifle. "I have four guys in the compound outside. Get around the corner, scare the guards with some warning shots, give me a distraction to get a stun grenade out there before they see it coming. Then we'll hit the nearest staircase. Once we get up to the roof, we'll go as far as we can toward the exit point and then rappel down to the ground. If there's a guy on the roof, we'll take him down and get you a --"

"I know what you must know, now. There is no one on the roof." She opened her mouth to snap that he _couldn't_ know everything she needed to know, that he had been locked in a cell for three weeks with no windows.

Shouting and banging came from the direction of the barricade; the first pack had reached the panel. Now the main worry was their slow trickle into the hall beyond and the second pack of guards.

A crash from the end of the hall. She turned, spotted a flash of a dirty uniform. "Hell. We have to get to the roof first."

"Come." He dove out the door and rolled when he struck the floor, a bullet cracking the tile at his feet. Landing in a heap, he curled his tired legs under him and thrust himself to his feet. Leaning out, he forced back the soldiers with some wild shots. _Good strategy._ She dropped to her knees, curled around the corner, and lobbed a stun grenade at the mob of incoming Nazis.

She had just ducked back when the grenade flashed; the sound set her ears ringing, but she ran after Zorin and kept her mind trained on the halls and the approximate distance of the Nazi mob.

German shouting reached the end of the corridor behind her; Zorin was at the far end of the hall and holding a door. Just as footsteps reached the end of the corridor behind hre, she dodged into the doorway and yanked him along with it.

"We cannot reach the roof here."

"Then why the hell are we in _these_ stairs?" She pulled a frag grenade from her pocket and turned to tear at Zorin's already ripped uniform.

"What are--"

She pulled off a strip of fabric and tied it around the pin. "2 seconds. Talk."

His head jerked in a nod. "There is no way to the roof now. The soldiers have closed it. But we climb the window above here."

"Climb out and onto the roof?"

"Pipes go from the window to the roof."

She jammed the grenade into the door handle and wrapped its pull-cord around the second half of the lock. "Hit the window. I've got your back."

He rushed up the stairs while she rose one floor and hunkered back against the wall. With any luck, the shrapnel would take down the first guys to come in and stop the rest. Getting pinned by a window would kill both her and her new ally.

She seized the chance to call the others. "The Fear! Status!"

"In the Enigma room now. The Fury and The Pain made it over the wall and haven't radioed since then."

_...If I could, I would have Major Dale hanged for sending us in like this._ She took a deep breath and heard the door rattle. _Here it comes._ She blazed up the stairs and switched off her radio.

At the top, two more floors up, Zorin crouched by the window with pistol in hand.

"Joy." He stood when she arrived. "I hear the radio. Your men live."

"How do..." She narrowed her eyes. "Follow me." She climbed out the window and onto the pipes that ran up its side. They weren't hard to scale, given the brackets that held them against the wall, and she rushed up the ten feet of steel and rolled onto her stomach on the roof.

Zorin followed close behind, panting and falling on his chest when he arrived. He was still weak from starvation, but adrenaline had taken over well enough, and she motioned to the roof as a whole. The Fear had already dealt with the turrets, she recalled -- the gun lay unmanned at the north end of the building.

"Now." She grabbed Zorin's collar and pulled him round to face her. "What about my men? And how do you know any of this?"

"I--" He cut himself off, and she struck him in the temple, knocking his glasses to the ground.

"I don't care what you think you're hiding. _Out with it._"

He jerked back, stunned, and fumbled for the lenses. "I speak to the dead here."

_You do what?_ She mentally reviewed that. "Once again."

"I am -- is it, a medium? Many people died in the battle here before you came." He held out a hand, as if asking her to accept what he was trying to say. "I see them, speak to them. They tell about this place, about the soldiers and problems."

"I'll work out how you do it later. For now, sure." She jabbed a thumb over toward the west border. "We came in--"

"Believe me!" He took her head in his hands. "Let me help you! I want others not to die! I want helping the Americans, the Soviet Union!" His silver-blue eyes bored into hers, raw and weary.

She took a deep breath and nodded. "All right. I believe you. I do." Rising to a crouch, she skittered across the roof and faced the western border of the compound. This was utterly preposterous, but she had all the time in the world later to think about that. Right now, he gave good intel. And he _did _know a lot that he shouldn't. If she had it, she would use it. "Ask your spirits where my men are. One is in all shiny black with a mask, the other has a lot of hornets. Bugs. Like bees."

The nearby sound of broken glass meant the Nazis were pushing up one of the stairwells to the upper windows. "Hurry."

"The psychics see your man in black. He fights with them at the north wall. He is wounded." Zorin's brows drew together. "He was shot in the arm twice, the leg once."

"He'll live." _Fury has taken worse hits before._ "What about the man with the hornets?"

"He is alone on the wall in the south, and he too is hurt." An explosion rocked the roof beneath her, and she wobbled on her knees. What were the Nazi men _doing_ down there? She turned her attention back to her men.

"Hurt how?"

"He has metal in his hip."

_Frags._ She rubbed at her temples and nodded. "Is he standing?"

"He can walk. He hides, now."

_How did they get so far apart?_ She nodded and shouldered her rifle. "Check the west side of the roof, would you? Look down, see who's here."

He obeyed as she switched on her radio. "Pain, Fury, where are you guys?"

No response.

"The Fear."

"The codebooks are secure and the room is on fire. Mission," he hissed in his snakelike tone, "accomplished."

"Good!" She took a deep breath. "Listen up. I'm on the roof of one of the labs. Fury is hurt. He's on the south wall, should be with a bunch of prisoners fighting back. Pain is hiding somewhere in the north. Round up Fury for me. Find us a cargo door and break it open, and we'll run for our lives after that."

"Going now."

She looked up at Zorin as another blast went off beneath her. "What are they doing down there?"

"They want to burn down the prison in the lab."

_God. They're tearing down their own compound to get rid of these guys and probably me._ "Okay. I'm going to wedge this up here, and we'll slide down to the ground." She anchored the hook on a pipe, tugged it hard to make sure it was firm, and took hold of the rope. "Can you make this?"

"...Yes?" He looked worried and tired from the climb up.

"No." Getting him this far and having him fall and break his neck or legs wasn't an option. "Here, hold onto me." She squeezed her eyes shut as she backed up toward the edge of the roof. Fifty feet down. He probably weighed about as much as her, so that was double her mass against her arm strength.

She hadn't done all this training for nothing. If she could even check her fall, that would be enough, so long as she didn't land hard enough to break anything.

"Get on." She motioned to herself.

He looked surprised, but he nodded and grabbed around her, hooking his legs around her waist. Tall and gangly, he hung over her shoulder and pressed his glasses to his nose.

"This will work?" She felt his arms trembling just barely.

Scared, well, she was scared, too. But fear had no place right now. "It better." She pushed herself over the side.

_Gah!_ She slipped a few feet down and clamped her friction gloves onto the rope. So heavy. Gravity was far stronger than she remembered, with a bodyweight-heavy pack.

Zorin reached up with one hand and took hold of the rope as well, helping her slide in intervals, his legs choking her at the ribs as adrenaline fueled his muscles. At least he had the sense to lock his arm around her chest rather than around her neck.

Slide, stop, slide, stop. Foot by foot, she inched her way down the rope, watching glass fly out of windows farther along the wall. Loud booms shook the wall, and each time she forced her hands to clamp tighter. The ground startled her when her feet touched down.

Zorin uncurled his legs and dropped off her. "Now?"

"Hold on." She leaned down to her radio. "Fear!"

"I'm outside now. I see The Fury."

"Good." She peered both ways down the wall of the compound. Smoke billowed from behind the lab, and gunshots rang out towards the south. Bright flame licked the air from one of the windows. "Any new things I should know about?"

"It is hard," he smiled at her now, a frightened laughter in his eyes, "to speak with the spirits while falling."

"Right." She stiffened in her guard's uniform and motioned to a niche in the wall. "Stay here. Get down. Talk to them if you can. I'm going to go get The Pain and come back here."

As Zorin rushed off to the alcove, Joy jog-marched toward the northern wall.

The Pain sat behind a stack of barrels, curled up and hidden to conserve energy. His hornets buzzed in a loose swarm over the surrounding fifty-foot radius, but they were spread thin and depleted.

"Pain." As she approached, she held up a friendly hand. Hopefully he wouldn't see her uniform before her face.

His weary eyes looked up at her. "Joy?"

"Where's your radio?" She rushed behind the barrels and crouched.

"Shrapnel got to it," he mumbled. His mask was pulled away from his face -- he had been using his bullet bees. "Got some in my leg, my hip."

"Hang on, we'll get you guys out." She pressed a hand to the tears in his suit; her hand came away sticky and red. "Are you with me?"

"I'm with you," he growled with a tense frown. "I can fight. I didn't know where any of you were, so I stayed here and kept watch. We split up for a second to scout, and then The Fury was gone."

She nodded. "He got swept up in the resistance forces here." Pulling Pain to his feet, she dragged him along the wall as he stumbled behind. "We'll have to find some way out that isn't where we came in."

"I've seen cargo doors. We'll go out through one of those, maybe. I think Fury could get them open."

She nodded. "Good idea. Let's go get him. Come on, I'll introduce you to someone."

But where Zorin should have been when she looked back, there was instead a mucky fight. In the rainy night, two white figures grappled under the compound's floodlights. Joy left The Pain walking along the edge of the lab -- he would be safe with his hornets and gun -- and sprinted towards the two men.

Zorin was locked in combat with another pale man, both of them scrabbling in the mud. Kicking his enemy away, Zorin leaped to his feet and held his hands before him in a familiar stance -- a close combat fighting stance, one the Nazis commonly used. It was a recent development, distinctly not Soviet.

_I think he has some serious potential._ She crept toward the second man, who whirled in his dirty prison jumpsuit and thrust out his hands toward her.

It felt like someone punched her in the stomach, and she flew back in the air. Landing on her feet, she skidded to a stop and circled the battle with rifle in hand.

_Telekinesis?_ She checked herself mentally; no wounds, no major pain._ Given Zorin, I can believe._

Zorin's eyes darkened; he glanced down at the ground as a sudden look flashed over his face. I looked like -- regret? Joy's brow rose. But he snapped to attention, seized his chance, and punched the man hard in the solar plexus. The prisoner doubled over, coughing and glaring up at the monochrome suit, and lunged.

Joy swung the rifle round and fired several shots into him, knocking him forward into the dirt. Arms shaking, he began to rise. The bullets in his body slid out of their holes and dropped to the ground with scarlet spurts.

"Fear," she muttered into her radio. Whatever that man was doing...she couldn't deal with much more of it. "Get The Fury. We've got to go."

"I found him. We're getting out now. Head to the south -- there's an open cargo door. It's guarded, but The End took care of them."

_Thank God for The End. And the end of this mission._ She set off at a run.

A blast at her feet sent her sprawling; she slid to a stop, rolled, and jumped up. The man was up again, ragged brown hair plastered in his face, fingers hooked toward her. As he moved them, her legs swept this way and that, swishing on the dirt and planting her facefirst in the muck again. She caught herself this time, elbows planting on the ground, and reached for the rifle.

The gun flew away as if under its own will. Something pushed up from beneath her, and she flew up into the air and landed hard on her back, rolling over her shoulder and crashing to a stop against the wall.

Zorin jumped the man, knocking him to the ground with an expert twist, and The Pain joined in with his huge canned-ham fists. With a swift blow to the head, Pain knocked out their attacker, who slumped over and lay still.

_That's some kind of martial arts trick. Not judo, probably something the Nazis hacked together._ She would have applauded him given any spare time.

Zorin's eyes flicked up to Pain's, all their fierce focus gone, a stunned look replacing them. He glanced down at his hands, then pushed them down to his sides and stared at the fallen man. Sandy brown hair shrouded his eyes, a long ragged beard covering his jaw. His clothes were ripped and bloodied.

"He is...no." His lips crooked in a smile of relief. "Not dead." Zorin pinched his bleeding nose and scooped up some dirty rainwater to wash the scarlet from his face.

"You can bleed." She beckoned him with a sweep of her arm, grabbing her rifle off the ground. "Just run."

Noses and hips forgotten, they all fled for their lives, into the arms of the resistance forces led currently by The Fury. He had vaulted to the front of the pack and, despite the holes in his suit and the blood trailing down his leg and arm, held his flamethrower high.

"Joy!" He pointed the nozzle away from her and beckoned with his free hand. The Fear, half-crouching far behind him, was levering a cargo door open as the weary prisoners took cover and used whatever weapons they had to keep the waves of guards back.

The psychics watched Zorin with nervous eyes. When he approached, they turned and held their hands or guns at him, as if he were a wild beast they had to keep at bay.

"Come with us," he called in Russian, then English, then a terrible try at German.

"No." Joy jabbed him with the rifle butt. "They can't."

"But--"

"We can't take them all. Our ride out isn't made to carry much weight."

"They will all die," he cast a nervous glance over his shoulder and watched as several of the men lowered their weapons in confusion and took a wary step towards him. "At least let them run."

"No." She turned away and watched The Fear as he pulled open the cargo door. "...I'm sorry, but we can't. They'll follow us, and then the troops here will know where our retrieval point is."

"You let the Germans," he clenched his fists as he tried to look for the right word, "_reznja_, kill, no--"

Fury slouched in frustration. "Slaughter." He waggled the flamethrower toward the door. "Joy, let's get going."

"You let the Germans slaughter them?"

She opened her mouth to speak, then looked over at the prisoners. Most of them were injured, all of them exhausted, and a few were creeping towards Fear as if wondering if the open door was really there or just a hallucination.

At least thirty of them, right here at their exit, ready to leave.

But she knew how they would react. They wanted a leader. They wanted someone to guide them out. She would have to seal the door behind her with Fury's fire to keep them inside, so that they could provide a distraction and not give away the unit.

All of them, dead for her and her men. The thought stung her heart, but it was either all of them or most of them, and most was the lesser of two evils. At the very least, the Cobra Unit would get out with Zorin, and the cleverest prisoners would find their own way.

_And how does a man who can talk to the dead have any sympathy for you when you condemn them?_ She stared into Zorin's pale eyes.

Concessions were out of the question, but...

"Look." She planted her hands on his shoulders. "We'll seal the door weakly. If they work hard enough, they can get out. Chances are some of them will escape." She jogged over to where Fear stood holding the huge double doors open just enough to leave.

He caught up to her quickly. "Joy, they can't hold out here long."

"_You will die!_" She grabbed him by the shirt, hefted him over her shoulder, and heaved him at the door so that he careened through and rolled to a muddy stop. The rain thickened to heavy sheets so dense she could barely see through the water in her face.

"Joy!"

"Can I kill him first?" came Fury's mutter from the door. "I call it now."

"Zorin." She aimed her rifle towards him. "I will, so help me, shoot out your legs and carry you myself. Ask The Fury if I will."

There was nothing but agreement in the half-hidden glare. He jerked his head in a nod, pushed through the door, and bent down toward the Russian man.

"Listen up, _govnyuk._ You let her, she'll drag you back in pieces."

Zorin held out his hands, still hoping, but his expression melted into one of submission. He cast an irritated glance at Fury.

"Good." She moved the rifle aside. "Someone call The End, we're getting out of here."

As they heated the door's locks and hammered them into a jammed mess with the stolen rifle, Zorin bowed his head and spoke silent words into the storm.


	3. Cold Memories

"Dale can go straight to hell. Where'd he get his damn intel?" Back at base, the medics rolled The Fury away in a hospital bed for treatment, and Joy followed him to the door. The Pain came by soon after, his hood and jacket gone to show mottled, lumpy skin. He departed more quietly, eyes closed in morphine-induced sleep.

_I agree._ She pressed a hand to her forehead, grateful for a moment to rest without the psychic waves tormenting her mind. As the clouds of pain parted, the impact of the mission struck her. She had just escaped a heavily fortified compound in the middle of an internal power struggle while escorting a prisoner. In the night. In the rain. With the compound on alert before she even arrived.

How had they all gotten out with their lives? The Fear cheated his way in with his stealth camouflage, and The End had his ghillie suit and the cover of the forest, but the rest of them had scraped by with no guaranteed way to survive. While her unit had performed far better than anyone had hoped -- Fear and Pain especially, for not being wounded any more than they already had -- her rescued POW was the unexpected star of the show.

Zorin was _superhuman._ He had singlehandedly led her out of the prison, guided her away from enemy soldiers, dynamically changed route based on information from the ether, told her the status and location of two unreachable members of the unit, and pulled out combat skills to help take down a telekinetic. All that, after being chained in a dark cell for three or more weeks with little to no food and no amenities.

When he first told her he could speak to the dead, she thought he was insane. Then delusional. Now absolutely otherworldly -- and real.

If he could contribute while half-dead, what about fully alive? Washed, fed, cured, and set up with some new equipment, he would be a serious threat to the enemy. No need for previous scouting. No need for maps, or scraped-together charts of sentry paths. No more screwed-up missions to some godforsaken fortress that looked and acted nothing like the intel said. The only problem was his reluctance to see others die. She could understand his point of view, given his abilities, but soldiers couldn't stop to decide such things in the middle of battle. As The End once told her, he loved life in all its forms, but in the moments between aiming and firing, five seconds was all you had to decide who lived and who died.

Five seconds. It was a luxury that only snipers had. She didn't have any time at all. Before Zorin protested, she had already chosen the prisoners' fates. He had both endangered the unit and changed nothing.

She brought her hand to her chin, eyes narrowing into the distance. Though she wanted more time to think about it, the man was in a bind. If the psych team at base ever got to him, they would never let him go. Tell him he was hallucinating, sedate him to his ears, lock him up. Dale would complain about how the mission had been for nothing. It _would_ have been for nothing.

So she had to get him out of there, and fast. Like the scene at the fortress, it had already been decided. Whatever the consequences, she had no regrets. She trusted herself.

"Nurse." She accosted the nearest white-coated woman. "There's a Soviet soldier in there. We brought him back a few hours ago. I'd like to see him."

Deft hands flipped through a packet of papers with the air of a distracted secretary. "Korolev?"

"Yes."

"According to the charts," she peered down her nose at Joy, "he can't have visitors unless they have proper authorization. We need to keep monitoring his condition and run more tests."

"Ma'am, I have proper authorization." She held out her dog tags that read _THE JOY -- CPT. COM. COBRA UNIT, _along with a host of other information. "As the commander of the unit who brought him back, I can see him whenever I want, along with Major Dale."

Well, that was something of a mistruth. Major Dale alone had total access; she had to have his permission. So she would act like she had it, which she would if she requested it. The nurse couldn't tell the difference.

Stepping back, she adjusted the papers and bounced her head in a nod. "Yes, but...his condition isn't stable. The psychiatrist wants another look at him."

"Take me there." Joy gave her the stern eyes that forced even The Fury to shut up and listen.

"Of course." The flustered nurse motioned to the doors that her men had passed through not long ago. "Follow me."

The smell of blood wasn't rare here at the base, and Joy wrinkled her nose at it. The halls were as clean as they could get, though the pipes in the ceiling were rusty, and the smell of human body on sterile tile brought back memories of the lab. The nurse left her at the entrance to a small room, inside which was a small drawn curtain concealing a bed. Shutting the door behind her, Joy pulled aside the curtain to see Zorin covered in blankets and lying with his glazed eyes half-shut. His lips barely moved in the silence.

_Talking to them again?_ She tapped on the side of his bed.

"Joy?" His head leaned to the side, and he reached back to push himself up.

"Hey." She pulled the curtain closed to hide them both. God, he looked terrible. A corpse in combat boots. Or, formerly in combat boots -- his shoes were in the corner, his camouflage suit gone. At least he was clean now, his alabaster skin blending into the sheets, but his cheeks and eyes were sunken deep into his bony face. "You look less like hell than you did, but that's not saying much."

"It is something I know you would say." He gave her a tired smile and brought a hand to his chest. "Thank you. I knew I would die there."

"You thought." She stepped forward and placed a hand on his bony shoulder, feeling her smile loosen, turn solemn. "Zorin. Have you told anyone about," her voice lowered, "your spirits?"

"No. The doctors here ask about my speaking, what is it about. I tell them that I sometimes see people, images. Not spirits. I tell people little, about them."

"Oh. So you said you have hallucinations." That made things worse. No wonder the psychiatrist thought he was off. She tightened her fingers, drawing a confused look from him, and bent down to whisper in his ear. "Do you want to go back to the Soviet Union?"

His brows lowered; his voice dropped. "...I do. But I cannot."

_That is...not what I expected._ "Why not?"

He mumbled something in Russian as he glanced away from her.

"What?"

"The Soviet Union wants me." The sound of soft rain on a tin roof reached her ears. The storm was drifting toward them now, here at base. "As...a weapon."

"You will be a weapon wherever you go in the military."

"No. Here, I choose." His eyes drifted away from her, narrowed, closed. "There...they put me in a lab to train me. They force me. I am not human."

"Like a lab rat, just some animal."

"In one year, they took me, watched me. There were other people there who had powers, but the leaders thought they were false. They closed the labs and put us to the army."

She nodded, lips pressed into a line, preparing her words carefully. "I know what will happen to you here."

His eyes lit silver-blue, but they dimmed when they focused on her face.

"The doctor will come in for another look. Once he hears about your 'hallucinations,' he'll say exactly what they did, and no one will listen to you. In fact, you telling them what you did puts everything you've seen in question. The Allies haven't really paid attention to paranormals, and pretty much no one in the military believes it exists. Just a few, and those are the ones that oversee my unit."

Now he looked discouraged, opening his mouth to speak.

"Wait." She held a finger toward his face. "Not yet. Now, I have a way to get you out of this. I'd like to give you a fair choice."

"It is not fair. You have told me so many bad things."

_Guilty as charged._ She stifled a wince and sighed. "All right. You have two choices. One is, you can get shipped off this base. I'm not sure where you'll go. Probably somewhere back in Russia, maybe back home. Either way, you'll be out of the war, out of prison, and out of everyone's hair. At peace. No more of what happened at the base, with you and us choosing who lives and dies. You don't have to see their spirits anymore."

He nodded, his eyes drifting in reminiscence.

"The second is, you can stay with me and my Cobra Unit. Be our intelligence man. We take the hardest missions, the ones no one else wants to or can do. We get things done, but we get them done under a risk of death like you've never seen. But we're also the best there is, because," she looked him in the eye, "the others are a lot like you."

Now he raised himself upright, taking her hand from his shoulder and holding it before him. His skeletal fingers were cold and hard against her palm. "I want not to go home. I want to stay, to stop the war."

"You understand that you'll have to see people die." She squeezed his hand enough that he winced. "You'll have to make the call, and sometimes it won't be saving everyone. You understand that what we did there, had to happen."

"I...yes. I know that. So long of seeing their souls in regret, in pain, it hurt me." His eyes closed in despair. "They try to leave, and you save me and stop them."

"It must be hard to see. But you know it had to be done, or all of us would have died."

"Yes." He looked up, his lips pulled back into a sad line. "I know."

"Can you do that again, Zorin? Can you see someone get to the finish line and then trip them yourself? Can you shoot them down when they're putting everyone else in danger? When the consequence of letting them live would be your own life?"

"My life above others--"

"Your life itself is no more valuable." She knelt by the bed. "But your powers can do far more while you're alive than while you're dead. By living, you can save more people. That's all we're about, in the end. Saving the world."

"I want to save the world." A sad smile, but enough of a smile to bring one to her face as well.

"By yourself?" She couldn't help a chuckle. "Come with me. I'll chase off the psych boys and introduce you to the others once you're in good health."

The sad look faded as he released her hand. "You have a good soul, Joy."

"May you never meet it. And one more thing." She backed up to the curtain, watching him sink down into his pillow. "You have to work on your English. Communication is key. I'll get you whatever resources I can, but I have an obligation to the rest of my unit as well."

"_Da._" His pale eyes glinted at her.

She offered a smile in return, and he rolled over to go back to sleep, or talk to his spirits, she wasn't sure which.

* * *

The feeling of eyes on his back woke him in dim night, the moon gleaming down through the scratched windows and across his bed. Looking up, he mumbled in Russian as he rubbed at his face.

"Who is there?" Glancing right and left, he searched for the visitor.

No sounds, just a sense of being observed and a warping of his mental perception. A psychic blur. As he traced out the source, he caught a mental glimpse of a wispy outline, smoky and blue-white, drifting near the window. As he turned his face toward it, a warm flush gathered behind his eyes. Even though he couldn't see the face, he knew the spirit was watching him in much the same way.

There were many ghosts about; he barely noticed them save for when they came close, but this one was paying specific attention to him. He focused, pressing his own mind into the spirits' realm, the world around him smeared into a dripping watercolor. Warm light trickled into the shade, forming a translucent body inside the silhouette and drawing in the jade-colored eyes that he had felt seeping into his skull. They smiled at him, though the face remained still, calm, an older man's stoic guise.

The medium pushed himself up, feeling his arms shake in their atrophy, and sat at attention.

"They've given you hell, haven't they, boy?" He stepped forward, stretching out a hand; Zorin reached out and touched it, feeling not skin but a soft warmth, an aura from the spirit that assured him all was well. He relaxed against his pillows. The ghost spoke Russian with an American accent, but it was still good to hear his own language. "I thought the doctors would never leave you alone."

"I don't know you, kind spirit." He pressed his hand to his chest in a faint bow. "I am Zorin Korolev."

"Just Stephen Lowe. I've retired from all the titles." He didn't wink, but his crinkling eyes came close as he chuckled.

"You know Russian?"

"I worked with Soviet operatives quite a bit in my time. My tone and all was never very good, but I try."

Zorin scanned the ghost's uniform, but he couldn't put a finger on where he had seen it. The cloth-image was in tatters, the edges slashed and long scars carved into the breast, but it was unstained.

"This?" Lowe followed Zorin's gaze and motioned to his coat. "Sergeant, US Air Force, stationed here not so long ago. It's good to talk to the living again."

He nodded once. "How long ago?" Immediately asking a spirit about their death was brash at best, not unlike asking a woman her age, but in this case Lowe seemed to be open to it.

"Three years, long enough." He turned to face the window, the moonlight shining through him. "I was in league with The Joy, back then, so I've been watching you since you got here. She's scoping you out, looking up information on you. I think she's real intent on seeing you join her."

"Hm? You know her? What can you tell me about her?"

"She's a real tough girl. She left OCS -- that's officer candidate school -- at a much younger age that most of the guys. About eighteen. A prodigy." His lips finally stretched in a reminiscent smile; he leaned back against the bed frame as if he felt its presence. Spirits, Zorin reminded himself, actually touched nothing in the real world but those who could speak to them, and even then it wasn't real touch. Just feelings, auras, sensations, but no solid contact.

"She seems very skilled...but I don't know if I should follow her." He sank back, relaxing his body to save energy for his mind. The spirit's outline, once translucent and fading, intensified until it seemed almost solid.

"She has four men who would follow her to Hell itself and back. Any of them would gladly take a bullet to the head for her." Lowe glanced down at Zorin. "She's got a charisma, you know, that a lot of officers don't have."

"I have no doubts..." He let his gaze slide off to the side, down to the floor.

"No doubts?" The eyes bored into him, a hand reaching out to touch his shoulder with a tingling zap.

Looking down, he saw the fingers draw away and managed a smile. "I...that isn't what I meant."

"I flew her in and out of her missions for a while, and that was really something. You have the chance to stay with her, well, most wouldn't give that up for the world. She only takes the best and the strangest."

Zorin couldn't help chuckling. "Strange, yes, I'm quite strange. But as I am in the military, I will most likely die early...I want my life to be spent well."

The smile faded. "Want to make sure you get it right."

Lowe's aura was changing...the air around him was chilly now, its grandfatherly warmth draining away. Zorin bowed his head for a moment in understanding. "I've seen so many souls in regret. It...is not a good fate, to despair for eternity."

The spirit reached into his coat, unbuttoned his shirt, pushed the ragged uniform aside. Below were long, deep scars, ripped red splashes in smooth skin. For a long, silent pause, he held the cloth apart, Zorin recoiling at blood that seemed alive, hot and liquid, as it seethed in the wounds.

"I wonder sometimes if I got it right."

The medium sat stiff, watching a trickle run down from one of the slashes. He stopped his hand as it rose to the rickety table beside him to grab a napkin. Not corporeal, he reminded himself.

"How?"

"Crash. I was flying the Cobra Unit out when we were attacked by a German wing. It was a dangerous trip, going right up through their radar. They made it, you can tell." The eyes deepened to a cold emerald hue. "Korolev. Soviet, huh?"

"Yes."

"I said there was a price, and I'm warning you. The highs are high, but the lows are low. Join the Cobras, and you're never going home. Ever. You'll live and die for The Joy and your comrades, wherever they are, until your final breath." He pressed a hand to the wounds, a red bloom gathering around his hand. "There's one thing you need to know from this, and mark my words."

Zorin narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, concentrating on bringing the spirit back into view. Lowe was fading, and no matter how hard he tried, the American man wouldn't come into focus. As the aura withdrew, the cold sensation pulling away, Lowe's color seeped out into the darkness. Leaving of his own will...no, but he had so many more questions! Zorin reached out to seize the spirit's presence, mentally plead with him to stay, but the wispy edges dissolved away.

"Come back! I need to know more. Don't leave yet!"

"You can't know The Joy and live. As of the moment you accept, you are doomed to die. She killed me, as she killed all her past pilots. Her scout teams. Her sailors. Her Unit, someday. Remember that."

_A strong soldier and woman, to have so many lay down their lives for her._ Zorin gave a sober nod and focused on the ghost's last outlines. Lowe was ready to leave, and no amount of mental summoning would keep him here against his will. Seeing them disappear...even if they weren't leaving for good, it seemed like second death. One death, to the spirit realm. The next, to...somewhere. Elsewhere. He raised a hand to the fading soldier, who stared back at him through murky green eyes.

"One day, she will kill you, too."

* * *

"We're sending him back to Russia." As Joy scraped the dirt off her uniform, Major Dale motioned to the small plane waiting out on the runway. "He'll be home, off the field, where he can recover."

"Recover." The nurse stopped in front of Joy, who gave her a moment's glower to force her back. "Major, why wasn't I notified?"

"You didn't have to be. I understand that you've taken an odd interest in him," he gave her a curt nod that told her to move aside, "but we can't keep him here any longer. He has been here three weeks."

"You haven't considered him as an agent?" She stood at attention, conveniently blocking both doors to the medic compound. The nurse gave her an agitated look, riffled her papers, and paced off to the side of the room to give the two soldiers room.

"Captain, step aside."

"Sir, there's nothing wrong with him." She held her ground and raised her chin, her face paint crinkling on her brows. "I assure you he is exactly what I'm looking for."

Dale's eyes darkened as he moved toward her. "_Step aside._ You've never given me this kind of trouble over something before."

"Because you're misjudging him." She met his gaze, held out her hands. "If you send him back to the Soviet Union, some lab will get hold of him, just like the Germans did."

"And why do you say that?"

"He told me."

"What?"

She braced for impact, straightening, sliding her feet into a hint of a defensive stance. "I went to check on him later the day he came. He told you he had hallucinations."

"Yes. He started spewing information that he never could have known, then refused to give us any rational explanation. When the psychiatrists pressed him, he wouldn't say a word otherwise. If he's hallucinating intelligence, well, we can't trust it, and we have to send him home."

Dale's resolute glare bored into hers, and the nurse watching them winced and ducked away into a different corridor with a mouthed comment: _I'll be back later._

"Major, he's afraid." Joy forced herself to relax a little; Dale had stopped advancing. If she looked too belligerent, he would pull rank and plow through her. "He has psychic powers, or should I say spiritual powers, and he has been locked up in enough lab-rat cages to know that he shouldn't tell every Tom, Dick, and Harry that he meets."

That stunned him a little, forcing him back a step in confusion. "Pardon me, Captain. Spiritual powers?" His tone bore a hint of, _Are you out of your mind?_

"Yes, sir. He's afraid that we'll do just what the Soviet scientists and Nazi army did, and lock him up for study." She nodded stiffly and motioned to the doors behind her. "He trusts me, since I rescued him and actually _believed_ him." A moment's sharp stare, just enough for Dale to press his lips together hard and take a long, deep breath.

"We just heard that he had been taken through enough German territory to have a good idea of their distribution. You meant to tell me that the Germans found a gem in their waste of resources?"

"Yes. Yes, they did." She gathered her stance back to an attentive, stiff one. "Sir. I request him for my unit, if he wants to join. If he wants to go home, let him go home."

Long, thick silence. Dale's mouth hung open just enough to see a flicker of white teeth, and he shook his head long and slow before sighing.

"Spiritual powers. Assuming I believe this, what can he do? And who's to say that he'll work for us?"

"Sir, if he joins the Unit, you can grill him about it all you like. Just keep the psych team away from him, or I know I'll never have him." She stepped back, pushing the door open to lead him in.

"I find your conclusion ludicrous. There must be another explanation for whatever he has done."

"Major, he told me everything I needed to know to retrieve my men, rescue him, and get out of the compound, all after being chained and starved for three weeks in a dark cell with no windows. This information included where my men were, what the German guards were doing in specific, and what had happened to the other prisoners, many of whom weren't contained anywhere near him." There, let him think about that for a while.

"Joy, this is--" He cut himself off, closing his eyes and taking a step forward. "All right. Let's see him."

Zorin was nibbling out of a can when she pushed the curtain aside. Skipping the formalities, she motioned to Dale.

The albino stared, fork poking out of his mouth, and shoved the food away. "Joy! You, ah, did not warn me. I would have..." He glanced away at the corner, then down at his hospital clothes. "I look--"

"You're fine." She stepped aside to let the two speak.

Dale sighed and offered a stiff smile. "Lieutenant Korolev, it's a pleasure to meet you. My apologies for not doing so before, but I had to supervise a separate mission and leave you with a different intelligence team." He extended a hand, and Zorin shook it. "Evan Dale, overseer for the Cobra Unit. I hear The Joy has taken an interest in you?"

_Good job, Joy, forcing an acceptance out of him. _She hoped he wouldn't be too pressured, but he had to decide _now_ or he was leaving.

Zorin smiled at her. "Ah, you are Major Dale."

"You've heard of me, then?"

"Yes." He wriggled to a more upright position, sitting at attention. "She asked me to join her unit."

"And what is your decision?" Dale clasped his hands behind his back.

Zorin glanced out the window, eyes defocusing, for just a moment before flicking his gaze back to the two soldiers. "I will stay with her."

Joy stepped forward to stand beside Dale. "You won't immediately merge with the rest of the Cobra Unit; first, I'll be putting you through some specific training exercises and generally getting to know what kind of a person you are."

He leaned his head to the side, soft white hair falling across his shoulder. "What kind?"

"I'll leave you two to discuss. Joy, I expect a profile on him in two days. God, the paperwork for this."

"Yes, sir." They exchanged salutes, one tired and the other pleased. Dale retreated through the curtain.

"What kind?" She turned back to Zorin's question. "You'll notice that none of us use our real names. I'm not so sure my men even remember each other's names, sometimes."

"Your name is not Joy? It is an American name."

"No. My codename is 'The Joy.' I have a real name, that you'll never know." She barely remembered her _own_ name sometimes; she wondered if anyone else in the entire base, or even the entire theater, knew it. "The rest of the unit are The Pain, Fear, Fury, and End."

"There is nothing left," he chuckled, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Big floppy scrubs aside, he looked more fleshy than before, his face carved rather than sunken. The ragged white beard was gone, and his hair had been slicked back out of his face. "I want to move around the base, but they do not allow me to leave."

"Well, first we have to get you some real clothes. We have custom uniforms; it depends on what sort of environment you work best in, although you'll have a general repertoire: urban, forest, night."

"The doctors took my other uniform."

"Yes, it wasn't fit to wear anymore."

"I am best at night." He shrugged, motioning to his face. "I am white -- so at night, in black and white, I am harder to see, especially in the winter."

"Russian winters, huh?" She nodded and ticked that off on a mental list. "Well, we do a lot of night work, so you should fit right in there. We'll get you monochrome if that's what you like, and you'll be able to use it sometimes, but you'll also have general browns and greens."

"What should I do?"

"Before that, I have to ask." She glanced over at the folding table next to his bed; two old books lay dog-eared against each other. "Have you been reading English books? Your English has gotten better, even in just three weeks."

"I have." He held up one of them. "It is a Russian book, but you have it in English words. I also speak to the doctors and others here."

She took it from him and flipped it open. "_Crime and Punishment._ I've read this."

His lips pulled into a knowing smile as he reached out to touch its cover. "I read it many times. This, I understand not as much as Russian, but..." He shrugged.

"Good book." She snapped it shut, placing it back on the table. "Now get out of bed and get moving. I'll get a basic green uniform sent to you, and then you can get out of here. Meet me in front of the mess hall at thirteen hours."

"Where is..." She heard his voice fade away as she rounded the turn into the hall.


End file.
